Bush Lists Cuban Exports: Sugar, Death Of Its Young

May 21, 1986|By Robert A. Liff , Sentinel Miami Bureau

MIAMI — Vice President George Bush, calling Cuban President Fidel Castro ''the hired help of the Soviet Union,'' said Tuesday the United States is tightening its 26-year economic embargo against the communist-ruled island.

Bush's speech to 1,000 people at the annual luncheon of the Cuban American National Foundation was beamed live into Cuba by Radio Marti.

Also Tuesday, the State Department issued a report, ''Human Rights in Castro's Cuba,'' which harshly denounced the denial of freedom of speech and religion and for the press.

''To keep Cuba afloat, he has become the hired help of the Soviet Union,'' Bush said of Castro. ''He gets his sugar subsidy and in return he sends young Cubans to Angola, Ethiopia and Nicaragua to fight and die for his Soviet masters. It's a sad truth but under Castro today, Cuba has only two big exports -- sugar and the death of its young.''

Bush rejected calls to loosen the economic embargo first imposed in 1960 by President Dwight Eisenhower, but did not specify how the Reagan administration intends to tighten it.

The State Department report on rights detailed a series of political arrests for charges such as writing ''Viva Reagan'' on a wall in Havana. In that case, four young men were jailed.

The report, relying on information from groups such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch, details a society in which Leninist principles of ''democratic centralism'' have left the people subject to authoritarian whims of Castro and his subordinates.